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'Pirates of the Caribbean' bloated and cartoonish
Date: 7 July 2006
Yo ho, yo ho . . . yeah, that's about all you get.
It is physically impossible to think of any puns after sitting through Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and having all traces of energy and enthusiasm sucked out.
Even more cartoonish than the original film from 2003 - a difficult feat to achieve - this second instalment in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, often feels like a live-action version of a Road Runner-Wile E. Coyote extravaganza.
And those moments are the funniest, liveliest parts. The rest is just bloated - and, like its predecessor, numbingly overlong. (Memo to whoever's editing part three, which was shot concurrently with part two and is due out in 2007: No family film inspired by a Disney amusement park ride needs to run 2½ hours. It's just obnoxious.)
Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley are all back, as is director Gore Verbinski. This time, the plot focuses on our heroes' misadventures as they scramble to find Davy Jones' famous hidden chest.
In theory, the special effects are the allure, but they feel redundant. You can only look at the band of bad guys - a creepy, crawly crew of half-humans, half-crustaceans, the worst of which is an enormous, multi-tentacled leviathan - for so long. They're not nearly as awe-inspiring as the undead buccaneers from The Curse of the Black Pearl who reveal their skeletal selves in the moonlight. (That moment where they march across the ocean floor as part of their sneak attack is still extremely cool.)
And the thrilling unpredictability of watching Depp do his kinda-gay, kinda-drunk Keith Richards shtick as Captain Jack Sparrow, which earned him an Oscar nomination, is completely gone. The swagger is still there (as are the smudges of kohl beneath Depp's piercing brown eyes) but returning screenwriters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio don't give him any particularly memorable zingers to say.
The bigger problem, though, is that we know the performance is coming. And like everything else about this film, we've seen it before.
Dead Man's Chest begins with Bloom's earnest Will Turner and Knightley's saucy Elizabeth Swann on the verge of marrying, only to be yanked from their planned nuptials and arrested for their association with Capt. Jack.
Seems that Jack is in trouble (again), this time for a blood debt he owes the fearsome ocean ruler Davy Jones (Bill Nighy, whose face is covered by some sort of octupus-looking monstrosity, and whose understated comic talents sadly go to waste). But if Jack can locate Jones' hidden chest, he can control Jones (or so the legend goes, it's all so complicated) and avoid being his eternal slave).
At the same time, the priggish Lord Cutler Beckett (Tom Hollander, who appeared with Knightley in Pride & Prejudice and with Depp in The Libertine) also wants the chest because he wants to rule the ocean and rid it of all pirates. Beckett runs the East India Trading Co., which seems to represent some sort of statement against homogeneity and corporate bullying - which is odd coming from a film that's being released by one of the world's largest and most powerful entertainment entities, but whatever. His plan is little more than a plot device to set the action sequences in motion, anyway.
Will and Elizabeth both find a way out of jail to re-team with Jack and help him look for the chest. Their adventures among the natives on a remote island can be visually impressive - the three-way sword fight features some inspired choreography - but they also call to mind an extended episode of Survivor.
Also crammed into the mix are a voodoo sorceress (Naomie Harris from 28 Days Later) who advises them on how to get the chest, and Will's long-lost father, Bootstrap Bill (Stellan Skarsgard, covered in barnacles and looking depressed). The entire endeavour just feels overstuffed, as if more somehow equals better.
Dead Man's Chest works best when everyone involved just lets go and embraces the absurdity, the innate kookiness, of the material. You'll find yourself laughing a lot, but the laughs come way too intermittently. You'll also find yourself squirming in your seat after about an hour and a half - and then you still have another entire hour to go.
One scene, for example, in which two sets of prisoners dangle over a gorge in spherical cages made of bones and try swinging their way over to a ledge, is delightfully silly.
More moments like that - and fewer convoluted plot machinations and draggy special effects sequences - would have made Dead Man's Chest a real treasure worth discovering.
Source: Ctv.com
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